Harrison School Newsletter

Issue 7

March 2023

Important Dates
Principal's Message
Year 7 Meet n Greet BBQ
Deadly Science STEM Awards
PBL Workshop
ACT Container Deposit Scheme
Hospitality Cake n Coffee
Library Reminders

Harrison School Swimming Carnival
Defence News
Harrison Ukelele Community Band
Aerosol Ban
P&C AGM
NAPLAN Online
Contact

Important Dates

Thursday 9 March

NAPLAN Practice Years 3 & 5

Friday 10 March

P-2 Assembly 9:15am - 10am

Monday 13 March

Canberra Day Public Holiday

15 March to 27 March

NAPLAN Testing

20 March to 22 March

Year 6 Camp

Tuesday 28 March

Mon/Tues Preschool Photos

29 March to 31 March

School Photos

Friday 31 March

Cross Country
5-6 Assembly 2:15pm - 3pm

Monday 3 April

North Regional Swimming Carnival

4 April to 6 April

Year 10 Sydney Camp

Thursday 6 April

School Photo Catch Up Day
Last Day of Term

Principal's Message

Dear parents and carers

We are now midway through term one, and progressing well.

I am pleased to advise that our new shade structure in the central courtyard area where our primary students play is now complete. I would particularly like to thank Aarti Kaher, one of our parents for instigating this project.

This structure will provide shade and shelter for many years to come!

PBL Awards
This year we have implemented a new school-wide awards system to support our Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) program, replacing the 'Harrison Awards'.

The Harrison P - 10 awards system provides:

A consistent and simple whole school approach
An approach that is aligned to Positive Behaviours for Learning
Regular opportunities to celebrate student success

How it works:
When a student demonstrates behaviour consistent with our school values (the same as our PBL expectations) to be Respectful, Responsible and Learners, a 'merit' is recorded for that student in our administration system. These merits are tallied for each student and go toward an award certificate and other rewards along the way.

A PBL Bronze Award is given when a student reaches 50 merits
A PBL Silver Award is given when a student reaches 100 merits
A PBL Gold Award is given when a student reaches 150 merits

These merit points are also added to the tally of the House the student belongs to, with the winning House awarded honours at the end of year assembly. Currently Mapleton is leading the House points tally:

Your help in supporting and encouraging students to gain merits for their own benefit, and also to help their House advance is greatly appreciated! Feel free to adopt your child's house as your own, wear the house colours, and join the friendly competition.

Harrison goes phone free in term 2
As you will be aware from our letter to all families last Friday, from Term 2 2023 Harrison School will be phone-free, to support our priorities of learning and wellbeing for all students. We will be using a system called Yondr, where if students choose to bring a phone to school, it must be secured in a personally assigned pouch and stored in their bag for the duration of the school day. You can now read more about how this will work at our school, including an FAQ, via this page on our website: YONDR Program At Harrison

Our school board has formally endorsed the implementation policy, which is available on our website here. We ask that you read this carefully, as it explains the obligations of students and parents in relation to phone use at our school.

There will be more information to come as we prepare for the introduction of YONDR in term 2.

We wish you all the best for the upcoming long weekend.

As always, please stay in touch with us via info@harrison.act.edu.au or phone our friendly front office team on (02) 6142 2200.

Best regards,

Andy Mison
Executive Principal

Year 7 Meet n' Greet BBQ

On Wednesday the 1^st of March the school held a welcome barbeque for year 7 students and their families. This is a new event this year, part of our efforts to build positive culture and community connection. The occasion provided a valuable opportunity for students and their families to meet with teachers and discuss student progress and wellbeing. It was a wonderful afternoon which included music, a sausage sizzle and positive interactions which will hopefully have an influence on students' overall high school experience.

If you were unable to attend the event and would like to ask questions and/or raise any concerns, please feel free to contact the Year 7 Co-ordinator Mr Tom Alexander on 614222000 or Thomas.Alexander@ed.act.edu.au.

Thank you to our fabulous Year 10 Leadership team for assisting with the cooking, serving, and cleaning up on the day.

Deadly STEM Teacher Awards

We are delighted to announce that our very own year 4 teacher Sam McKenzie has won a prestigious award for Deadly STEM teachers.

Community members nominated teachers in late 2022, and the winning teachers and assistant teachers showcased outstanding dedication to inspiring and building the future generation of STEM professionals.

Samantha MacKenzie is awarded for her use of Indigenous technologies and inspiring students to investigate and use Indigenous technologies themselves. Well done Sam!

PBL Classroom Expectation Workshop

40 students from years 7 to 10 came together to work on our PBL classroom expectations. These expectations will clearly explain what it looks like to be a respectful, responsible and a learner in all of our high school classrooms. The expectations will be displayed on large posters in all classrooms at the beginning of next term. Well done to our 7 – 10 students for working so well on this PBL project!

ACT Container Deposit Scheme

William the Waste-free Warrior is encouraging kids at Harrison Public School to recycle using the ACT Container Deposit Scheme (CDS). The toy koala is awarded to the group of students producing the least amount of rubbish from their lunch packaging.

“Waste-free Wednesday is mostly about getting kids to think about what’s in their lunchbox,” said Year 1-2 teacher Shane Newman.

“I’ve made it a competition between classes and groups to make it bit more fun,” he said.

Harrison Public School has a range of sustainability initiatives and one of the most popular is recycling through the ACT CDS. Shane and Year 4 teacher Sam MacKenzie lead the container collections.

“It started three years ago in just one class and the 10c container refunds went towards an excursion to the movies. Then the recycling spread to other classes and the funds went towards buying computers,” Shane said.

It wasn’t long before the whole primary school was saving their bottles and cans to recycle. A sustainability team was soon formed and the school approached Bunnings for dedicated container recycling bins.

Sam links the scheme to classroom learning. Her students completed a waste audit at the school to determine how much landfill was created. Afterwards, they did a project to explore how they could improve sustainability at the school.

“The students were really shocked by the amount of rubbish that was generated. Kids talked about the recycling they did at home and how we could use the same ideas at the school. They also realised that there were no bins for eligible containers in the playground, so we’re trying to change that,” Sam said.

The school has raised around $500 through container refunds and there has been lots of suggestions from the students about how to use the money raised.

“The money might go toward a worm farm and bins for the playground. It would be nice to tie it into waste reduction,” said Shane.

Hospitality Cake n' Coffee

On Friday 3^rd March the hospitality classes recreated a café experience by providing cake and coffee to staff. Students baked cakes and made fresh coffee for forty orders. Students then delivered orders to staff in various areas around the school for recess.

Three varieties of cake and a selection of coffee were on offer. All students were involved in the cake making during the previous lesson and then on the day of service each student was assigned a specific role and responsibility as found in the hospitality industry. The skills learnt from this experience included:

garnishing and plating for service
cooking and preparing food/drink for service
customer service
barista training
receiving of cash and EFTPOS transactions
portioning and quality control
time management and teamwork
fulfilling food/drink orders accurately

The activity was a huge success, and the feedback was extremely positive from the staff with many looking forward to the next one. We were so proud of the students and their achievements, especially as it was the first time they had catered for others.

Library Reminders

Welcome back to all our wonderful families especially all new families!

The library is now open every morning before school, 8:30- 9:00 for family reading time. Parents and carers please come and browse our collections, borrow and read together.
https://fivefromfive.com.au/parent-resources/reading-with-children/

Students will visit each week with their class to borrow and read. Students from Preschool to Year 2 require a labelled library bag. (A shopping bag is perfect) Parents could you make sure that the book is returned each week and the library bag is in the school bag on their set library day.

Hospital Donations.
Thank you to all the children that made Get Well cards for the children in the hospital. I took all the cards along with many books to Canberra Hospital and the nurses would like to thank all the students for your kind thoughts.

SORA
eBooks and audio books can be borrowed using the SORA app which is found on the library homepage on backpack.ed.act.edu.au or you can download it on any device. https://soraapp.com/welcome
Students need to log in with their school log in and password to access this.

The Library Team.

Harrison School Swimming Carnival

On Thursday 23^rd February, Harrison School held our 8-16 years competitive swimming carnival.

Students from the age of 8 and up had the opportunity to swim at the Gungahlin Leisure Centre with their peers using a variety of swimming strokes and over varying distances.

It was a fantastic, fun filled day for both students and staff.

At the end of the day, we ran the traditional Harrison Fish race which consisted of the students from each of the houses competing in the 50m Freestyle to see who would be the 2023 Harrison Fish.

Big congratulations to Khan Wawrzonek who won this year’s Harrison Fish award.

Defence News

Our Defence support mentor Sarah was able to obtain a number of WW1 items from the Australian War Memorial. We then created a space for students to go in and see, touch and learn about ANZAC history.

Students have very much enjoyed this activity and it has been a great success.

Sarah also obtained a new Parachute which our junior Defence club very much enjoy playing with at club. We are also currently trying to build a giant tower!

Many of our parents are away or deployed and we thank our families for keeping us informed as it allows us to add the extra support in for our Defence Students.

As always for our Defence families if you or your child need anything pleased don’t hesitate to contact our DSM.

Harrison Ukelele Community Band

We are thrilled to announce the return of our Harrison Ukulele Community Band! This is a wonderful opportunity for parents, carers, staff and students to join together in joyous sound as we come together to learn and perform songs on the ukulele.

Where:   Junior Music Room Demountable (Mr P’s Room)
When:   Friday mornings from 8:15 (starting 17th Mar)
Who:      Students K-10, parents, carers, teachers

Bring a uke/guitar or borrow one of ours. See you there!

Aerosol Ban

Dear parents and carers. Please be aware that aerosols are not allowed at school, due to their impact on those students and staff with allergies and other respiratory conditions. Your assistance in ensuring students do not bring these to school is greatly appreciated.